Ordinance would provide boxes to collect medicine

County Oxy Task Force officials announced a proposed ordinance Wednesday that would provide collection boxes for old medications.

Supervisor Pam Slater-Price and Sheriff William Gore said the measure is aimed at keeping drugs out of the hands of teens who may take drugs such as OxyContin and Vicodin from their parents’ medicine cabinets.

Slater-Price said it’s against the law to dispose of medications in the trash or by flushing them down a toilet. Returning pills to a pharmacy is not allowed, so unused pills sit on medicine cabinet shelves, she said.

Drop boxes would be placed in 20 Sheriff’s Department facilities and anchored to the floor. The cost of the collection bins is estimated at $25,000 to $35,000, with the money coming from the Sheriff’s Department and the county.

The ordinance will be brought to the county Board of Supervisors for approval on April 27.

Submarine Jefferson City is back from deployment

SAN DIEGO: The crew of the submarine Jefferson City arrived home Wednesday from a six-month deployment to the western Pacific.

Friends and family greeted the nearly 140 sailors at Naval Base Point Loma.

The deployment covered more than 40,000 nautical miles, the Navy said. Ports included Japan, Bahrain and Singapore.

The crew participated in two community-relations projects. In Bahrain, the sailors worked at a center that helps children with learning and communication disabilities. In Singapore, the sailors, including Cmdr. Ed Anderson, went to Armenian Church of St. Gregory the Illuminator to help complete a cleaning project in and around the historic church.

The sailors also “executed missions critical to national security” and took part in several U.S. and multinational naval exercises, the Navy said. The Jefferson City, a Los Angeles-class fast-attack submarine, was commissioned in February 1992.

SUSAN SHRODER

Dubois family to host search-rescue training

ESCONDIDO: The family of slain Escondido teen Amber Dubois will be hosting a three-day search-and-rescue training for volunteers should the need for such a communitywide search effort arise again.

The classes will be held from 6 to 9 tonight and from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Friday. The cost is $125 per person and includes class materials and a certificate.

The classroom portions tonight and Friday will be at the family’s old search and rescue headquarters at 755 N. Quince St. in Escondido. Saturday’s class will be in the field. Lessons will include search and rescue tactics, crime scene preservation, man-tracking, lost person behavior and grid searching. Amber, 14, was last seen walking to Escondido High School in February 2009.

For the next several months, hundreds of volunteers regularly fanned out to search for her. Her remains were found a year later on a remote Valley Center hilltop.

For more information on the classes and to register, go to bringamberhome.com.

Kristina Davis

Endangered frogs get going, thanks to the cold

SAN DIEGO: Three months in the chiller have created a bit of heat — figuratively speaking — for endangered mountain yellow-legged frogs at the San Diego Zoo’s Institute for Conservation Research.

Research coordinator Jeff Lemm put about two dozen frogs in refrigerators at the start of the year in hopes of inducing lots of breeding by replicating winter conditions in the mountains. He kept some frogs out of the 40-degree chambers to highlight any differences created by the temperatures.

Turns out, Lemm’s hunch was right. “It looks like hibernation is the key,” he said Wednesday. “Basically, hibernated animals are the ones showing breeding behavior and laying eggs.”

The current count: about 1,300 eggs. It will take a few more weeks for Lemm to know how many viable tadpoles emerge.

Assuming several do, Lemm and his colleagues at conservation agencies plan to release some of the rare creatures into their native habitat in the San Jacinto Mountains.

MIKE LEE

Tax-protest rallies are planned around county

Tax-protest rallies are scheduled in at least 10 locations in the county today, the deadline day to file tax returns.